As family historians, most authors have a list of public (or private) repositories that they would like to see their work preserved in. Many times this list equals or dwarfs the list of “paying customers”. Many times budget will impact how many courtesy copies may even be produced: Consider soliciting sponsored copies. With POD, there is no reason a special “donated by” page can not be included directly into the book binding. A more traditional route would be with personalized donation book plates. Further incentives, beyond the good preservation work, might include a gift, digital copies of source material, special access to your archives, etc.

Splitting binding types for economy: Final book publishing costs can be reduced by the types of bindings that are chosen. While a full project of hardbound books (standard, deluxe, or color) may not be affordable, a publishing of softbound books are. Depending on the project, it may be possible to hard bind a few of these special to accommodate special paid pre-orders, special gift and family books, collector editions, etc. By printing the text blocks at the same time, offset orders even saves on printing, versus publishing a hand full of hardbound books separately.